There are rules and boundary lines. There’s nostalgia. There’s even an influential Facebook group that reviews them. You might say the North Shore has an obsession with the roast beef sandwich.
The Modern Butcher isn’t a roast beef shop. But they sure do sell a lot of roast beef sandwiches.
Married couple and co-owners Warren Means and Lisa Nichols have been serving up the North Shore specialty once a week since they opened their whole animal butcher shop in 2019. At first, they experimented some, trying out brioche buns and homemade barbecue sauce over onion rolls and James River barbecue sauce.
But as they would find out quickly, the people of the North Shore like their three-way beef sandwiches to be traditional — that includes thinly sliced rare beef, that James River sauce, Cain’s mayonnaise, and cheese on the bottom, squished between two slices bread, typically an onion roll.
“Over those couple of months we really changed that sandwich and tweaked it to more of a traditional one,” Nichols said. The only ingredient they wouldn’t compromise on is the mayonnaise — they use Duke’s.